


high and low

by laratoncita



Category: On My Block (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Gang Behavior, F/M, Gen, Past Relationship(s), Racism, Single Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21633913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laratoncita/pseuds/laratoncita
Summary: Raising a daughter is a thankless job.
Relationships: Monty Finnie/Selena Finnie | Julia Whitman
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	high and low

**Author's Note:**

> courtney wrote a fic abt the diaz parents and i got inspired to write one about the finnies so!! if u haven't read [all for us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21624868) go do it :) 
> 
> warnings for anti-blackness, colorism, canon-typical behavior and attitudes, etc. i am a non-black latina & have done my best to consider these topics respectfully within monty's perspective but am obviously limited by my own experiences. mostly im trying to figure out why monty is written like a white new england suburban father lol

When Selena leaves, Monty doesn’t think it’s the end of the world.

He wants it to be. He wants to undo the past six months, the past year, the past five. Wants to wipe away the memory of her smile and her laugh and the way he thought she loved him. He met Selena while she was studying at Los Angeles City College. He had just passed his CDL certifications, twenty-one and tired of working dead-end retail jobs. Trucking brings in good money, money better than slinging in the streets does. His mother tells him she’s proud of him and doesn’t bring up the fact that his father is buried in a cemetery she’s never taken him to.

He’s there to pick up a friend of his, inside the building because he wanted to use the bathroom. Knowing LA traffic, it might be awhile before he gets them where they’re headed. He’s just walking back into the hallway when Selena—cute, curly haired, that much he caught—nearly crashes into him. She manages not to, but she drops most of the books she’s carrying.

“Shit,” Monty says, and squats down to pick them all back up. Like something out of a movie, Selena will tell him later, after the first date, and the second, and the third, when he asked her to marry him and she said yes, yes despite Freeridge and her family and the weight of this life on both their shoulders.

Selena says—said, past-tense, it’s a slip up that Monty still makes now, sometimes, if he’s not being careful, but then again, maybe she still says so—well. She told Monty, those first months of their relationship, fragile like moth’s wings, that love at first sight isn’t real.

(“You’re talking about chemicals,” she said, “pheromones. There can be a connection, but that doesn’t mean it’s love.”

“But it was,” Monty always told her.)

“It’s alright,” Selena says, and when she looks up at him Monty’s a goner. He’s always liked brown eyes. Half a second and he’s convinced he likes hers best.

If life were really a movie, they would have been pulled apart by the universe and then thrown together over and over until it stuck. But Monty’s life has never been a movie. What is it called, when a gangbanger turns to crack after claiming he was protecting his people? Is it a good story for the big screen? Monty’s mother kicked the man out before their son even turned ten. She sat him down the night before his first day of junior year and calmly told him his father was dead, and no, there would be no funeral.

Because it’s real life, Monty gets the number to her landline and takes her out the next weekend. They go out once a week, when she’s not busy with class or work and he’s not on a drive. He’s usually gone on weekends, but she says seeing him on Wednesday’s like a special mid-week treat, and it works out. Weeks stretch into months and their dates turn into overnight stays. Monty says I love you first and Selena says it right back, even if they argue back and forth about whether love at first sight is real or not.

Monty’s convinced he’s about to win the argument when Selena sits him down, Monse asleep in her room, and tells him that she’s leaving. The details don’t matter, except for how they do. She was so young when she got married, she tells him. So young when Monse was born, twenty-three years old, a degree in English from Saint Mary’s. She’s not happy copy-editing. This isn’t what she wanted her life to be—stuck in Freeridge, she says.

She says it’s her who’s changed but Monty’s the one who missed it, so whose fault is it, exactly? His mother says he didn’t put up enough of a fight, didn’t do his best to convince her her heart was wrong. She’s fifty years old and can barely breathe some days, but she gets her lungs working long enough to tear Monty to shreds best as she can. He’s used to it. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting.

He knows his wife. He would say he knows Selena as well as he knows himself, and that pearl of desperation, the desire to get out of Freeridge, that’s one that lives in him, too. But he has a job that pays well enough, a daughter that relies on him, a mother who’s dying of cancer slowly, slowly. Maybe he refused to recognize the ways Selena was changing. Maybe she’s right and he doesn’t know her all that well to begin with.

The morning after she leaves, he waits for Monse to wake up and realize what’s changed. It takes until after lunch, nearing dinner, for her to realize her mother is gone. She seems to get it instinctively. Asks for her, once, with curious eyes, and when Monty says, “It’s just you and me, baby,” she nods and goes back to her book, words she can’t read yet but sounds she’s nearly memorized. Monty thinks, briefly, that the two of them will be okay.

* * *

Monse doesn’t keep secrets. In that sense, she’s more like Monty than Selena.

Communication slows and starts up and slows for what drags on for years. By the time Monse is eight, however, they haven’t heard from Selena in over a year.

“It’s fine,” Monse says, like her face doesn’t show every hurt weighing on her too-young shoulders. Monty’s mother has been dead six months. Monty refuses to lie to his daughter, but he doesn’t badmouth Selena, either. Monse heard enough of that from other people, blood included. She punched some boy in the nose in the first grade, and when he asked her why she said it was because he said something about Selena.

There are plenty of bad mothers in Freeridge. What Selena did— _leaving_ —is perhaps something that some of them could take cues from. But Monse has her grandmother’s temper, and a mean right hook at seven years old, and part of Monty wants to laugh. In a place like Freeridge, her attitude is a good and bad thing. She’s a good child; prone to arguing, but with surprisingly cogent counterpoints to whatever argument Monty’s got for her. He doesn’t let her run wild, but she doesn’t try to, either. They feel as much like a team as a father-daughter duo. She’s his whole life, and Monty can’t imagine anything intruding on that.

When Selena first leaves, her mother calls, sometimes. Her sisters swing by to pick up Monse, take her to the beach or shopping or a movie. The habit dies off sooner rather than later, within few years of Selena leaving. Her maternal grandmother stops calling. When they still come around, they tell him to do something with her hair. Or about her clothes. Or her preference for the rough-and-tumble habits of the boys she ran around with at school She needed a woman’s presence, clearly; was Monty sure he could handle it?

Maybe they think she’ll look more like Selena the more they pester him. They ask about hair relaxers, about what his father looked like. Start sending her home to him with sunscreen and hats as gifts.

Monty says, “Skin cancer can affect anyone,” and tries to pretend that Monse can’t understand what her aunts mean, what they think of Monty and his bloodline. He takes her to the beach and lets her stay out in the sun as long as she wants, reapplies sunscreen every two hours. The two of them come home several shades darker, Monse beaming, and Monty thinks—no, he _knows_ that she makes everything in this life worth it. Whatever anyone might think about who they are, where they’re from, none of it matters. They’ve got each other.

She doesn’t keep her feelings from him, though whether that’s by choice or not is unclear. He knows his little girl better than anyone. He said that about Selena, too, but there’s something to say about raising the child you helped make. He’s always impressed, though not surprised, when she brings home top marks, her writing neat and tending towards story-telling. In _that_ sense, she’s Selena’s child through-and-through. But she looks like Monty. He’s equal parts proud and terrified for her.

Sometimes, he would think that maybe it’s a good thing, that they had a daughter named Monse. It means that the Prophets won’t come after them for another Finnie soldier. Monty was naïve—he didn’t realize what it meant, at first, to raise a woman and not a man. Didn’t realize that all the things that happen to women could happen to this child he was tasked to raise.

It seems like he blinks and she goes from asking for another bedtime story to telling him she can take care of herself just fine. Fourteen is too young, it’s too young for a lot of things, but he trusts her, and he _believes_ in her, so he lets himself be convinced. Later, later he knows this wasn’t his best choice, another in a long list of them.

He hears about the Cesar thing before it’s ever a _thing_ , his eighth-grader with braces and caught up in what feels, to her, like first love. He tries not to show his amusement; they’ve always been honest with each other. Perhaps he doesn’t take it seriously, not at first. But then it turns serious, faster than Monty would like, and he might not be an expert at parenting, but he can figure things out himself, especially when it comes to young love.

He resigns himself to the idea long before his daughter’s ex-boyfriend is desperate for a safe place to stay. Tries to tell himself that he’s being the kind of father she needs. This has always been how they function, as a duo, as a team, as a family. She trusts him and he trusts her. His whole heart, not on his sleeve but here, made physical, his daughter growing up and calling him before bed without having to be reminded. Never forgetting about him. Still his daughter.

Monty’s never claimed to be an expert at this parenting thing. When he first held Monse it was akin to cracking his chest open, like holding a pearl on his fingertips. He was so awed he said nothing for a long time, and Selena teased him, said he was star-struck.

(“Is this what you mean by love at first sight?” she asked him, and he hadn’t been able to answer. If he could go back he’d say yes. There are lots of ways to fall in love. Lots of ways to do it at first sight, too. He’s glad Selena gave him two chances for that, even if one of them didn’t stick.)

In a lot of ways he’s guessing at it. He was a latch-key kid himself, during the height of the crack epidemic, his father on the run more often than not and at his mother’s throat just as regularly. Compared to what Monty saw growing up, Freeridge is a lot calmer. He feels that way for a long time, and maybe it’s just that he’s been desensitized to it. He’s seen a lot of boys—hard-working boys, boys who could be good men, boys who never had the chance to just _be_ —get caught up in it. He doesn’t stop to think about what it means that some of them might linger long enough to catch ahold of his daughter.

Monse is always going to be his little girl, but she’s grown enough, Monty thinks, that it’s okay if he leaves her on her own. She’s had a sitter for so long, and she’s never caused trouble, and, and, and—Monty has too many bad reasons to explain why he thinks (or thought, or—) to leave Monse alone. Maybe he dropped the ball on that one. Monse, until recently, hasn’t really given him reason to think otherwise, though. They’re a team. Nothing’s really changed.

The main point is this: Monse doesn’t keep secrets. That’s probably why Selena showing up on his doorstep stings so badly.

* * *

In the aftermath of Selena—or Julia, whatever name she’s claiming now, which is funny, because that was her name already, _Selena Julia Jimenez_ , the lightest-skinned of all her sisters, and maybe that’s why they were so disappointed in Monse—Monty’s at a loss. It doesn’t matter that he’s been parenting Monse for fifteen years already. Monse’s hurting in a way that he can’t touch. His father left because his mother said he couldn’t come back. His mother’s the reason he’s the man he is.

What does it mean to have a mother who wants you to be something else? It’s not the first time that someone with the same smile as Monse has made it clear she’s not what they wanted. Not what they expected. Monty’s loved Monse since the second she was first in his arms, earlier, even. In a lot of ways, he never wants her out of his sight. He wants to keep her safe, and help her grow, and watch her turn into a woman stronger than her mother, a person stronger than he is, too.

It’s almost funny, that he was the one insisting that her survival—because that’s what it is now, Freeridge isn’t what he thought it was, more like what he lived through growing up, and the part of him that is his father’s son lays blame at the feet of the Santos sniffing after his daughter—hinged on getting out of this neighborhood. He gave her pamphlets, he showed her the websites, an East Coast boarding school where his only child would be far away from all this violence. And him, of course. She’d be far away from him, too.

He survived those three months without her. He did. But he _felt_ it. Gone for weeks with sporadic texts. No more goodnight phone calls, Monse caught up with her mother and her mother’s _new_ family. Monty knows what her new husband looks like, knows their children take after him. Does Selena like that? Does _Julia_? Does she look at her children and wish they looked like her? Her sisters don’t pass, this he remembers, but Selena always has.

Monty knows what it means to be a Black man in Freeridge, in Los Angeles, in this entire country. Maybe Selena never got it. Maybe she did, and that’s why she still wants Monse to be someone she can never be. Or maybe the things her mother used to say about him stuck. Monty can’t say for sure. It didn’t keep them from loving each other while they still could, but that truth that Selena couldn’t admit? That’s what pulled them apart it. He knows it like he knows he would do anything for his daughter.

He can’t understand exactly what Monse might have to keep tolerating, as she leaves girlhood behind and Freeridge in the dust, but he has an idea of it. He was raised by a single mother, he grew up in this city. His Spanish is worse than Monse’s but he knows what certain words mean. He knows there are a few of them that can be tossed towards them, made worse by his dead father’s legacy lingering over them like fog. Monse might be Mexican, too, but that’s exactly how everyone will see it for the rest of her life, he thinks. _Mexican, too_. He knows exactly what people think first when they look at her. He’s lived with it his whole life.

And then Monse says she wants to leave. He’s not sure how to take it.

(“I think it’s just time for me to get out of here,” she tells him.

He crosses his arms. “Weren’t we fighting about this a few months ago?”

“Dad,” she says, rolling her eyes and then giving him a pleading look. “Look. I think you were right.”

“That’d be a first—”

And she laughs.)

They have time, he thinks. They have the whole summer. He aches, prematurely, at the thought of Monse being somewhere he can’t reach her, or at least not without some serious planning. Monse’s stubborn. Once she gets an idea into her head it’s pretty solidly stuck there. She’ll change her mind if she needs to, if she knows it’s what she needs—she had loved living with her mother, he knows this. Maybe if Selena hadn’t—if she were still Selena and not Julia. Maybe Monse would have stayed.

But Monse’s fifteen years old and her best friend has been dead six months. Her friends are ( or were, Monty’s not exactly clear) embroiled in the sort of gang activity _his_ mother stopped tolerating while he was still in elementary school. She’s living a reality that mirrors Monty’s in some ways, but more often, he slowly realizes, it’s completely different.

So fine. He tells Monse she has time to change her mind, but he prepares for her to leave, anyway. The house will be even emptier without her. It might even be a good idea for him to sell it, find a two-bedroom somewhere different, in a whole new city. Maybe the two of them can explore a new place every time she’s on break from school, maybe he can give her the kind of life experiences that someone like Monse, so creative it’s bursting out of her, deserves to take as inspiration.

They don’t need Selena. They _don’t_. He didn’t think it was the end of the world when she left. Not because it didn’t hurt, but because he couldn’t let it be. If it was just him and Monse, and Monse was three years old, then it was his job to put their lives together. To turn them both into something, to make sure his daughter had the chances he didn’t have. It’s not the end of the world because it has to be the beginning. As long as he has Monse, and she has him, the two of them will be just fine.

She might be growing up now, but she’s safe. She’s someone Monty’s proud of every day. Even when they’re far apart, as long as they can find each other somehow, they’ll be okay. He can see the changing years ahead of them and feel ready. It’s a beginning, not an end.

But when she doesn’t come home from school on her last day. Well. Maybe that’s a different kind of ending.


End file.
